Syrian troops near Turkey border

Syrian troops near Turkey border

Syrian refugees walk as they enter the Turkish side of

the border at the border zone between Syria and Turkey,

near the Turkish village of Guvecci.

          Syrian troops massed near the Turkish border, witnesses said on Thursday, raising tensions with Ankara as the president, Bashar al-Assad, uses increasing military force against a popular revolt.

          Hundreds of terrified refugees crossed into Turkey to escape an army assault, witnesses said. Syrian troops stormed the village of Managh, in a rural region.

          ‘I was contacted by relatives from Managh (15 km south of the border). Armoured personnel carriers are firing their machineguns randomly

          Sunni Turkey has become increasingly critical of Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Islam, after previously backing him in his drive to seek peace with Israel and improve relations with the United States.

          A Turkish Red Crescent official told reporters about 600 Syrians had crossed the border on Thursday morning.

                    He was referring to a scorched earth military campaign in the arable hill region southwest of Aleppo, during which rights groups say Syrian security forces have killed more than 130 civilians and arrested 2,000.

          The Syrian troops hauled down the Turkish flag and replaced it with a Syrian one. They stayed through the morning and then withdrew shortly before noon.

Syrian tanks enter Turkey border village

Syrian tanks enter Turkey border village

Syrian refugee boys chant slogans during a protest, from behind a fence at the Turkish Red Crescent camp in the Altinozu district of Hatay, 30 kilometres from the Syrian border, on Friday. Nearly 10,000 Syrians have crossed the border into Turkey fleeing

   Army tanks on Saturday entered a village bordering Turkey, where 10,000 Syrians have sought refuge, an activist said, as Washington warned Damascus over its ‘continued brutality’ against protesters.

          As many as 19 people were killed in protests around the country on Friday, the Local Coordination Committee of anti-government activists said, although it added that it had collected only 12 names so far.

          Syrian soldiers in at least six tanks and 15 troop transporters entered the border village of Bdama on Saturday, widening the crackdown focused in the northwestern province of Idlib, activist Rami Abdel Rahman said.

          The head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ‘heavy gunfire’ broke out as the troops entered the village, a few kilometres north of the flashpoint town of Jisr al-Shughur.

          Residents of Bdama had been supplying refugees fleeing across the border from the Jisr area, he said, contacted by telephone from Nicosia.

          Rights activists said protests broke out after the main weekly Muslim prayers on Friday as the army pressed its campaign against northern towns and the number of refugees fleeing across the border into Turkey topped 10,000.

          Abdel Rahman said the deadliest incidents on Friday took place in the central city of Homs where five people were shot dead.

          The United States is weighing whether war crimes charges can be brought against Damascus to pressure the government to end its bloody crackdown on dissent, a senior administration official said.

          Hillary on Saturday urged a transition to democracy in Syria, saying in a commentary in the Arabic-language Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the government’s crackdown would not quell the momentum for change.